The Bloodbath

     Good morning, Gentle Reader. Happy Guy Fawkes’ Day. Do you feel like burning someone in effigy? I do.

     Needless to say, the results of the midterms have been on everyone’s mind. How did it happen? What should we expect? How do we cope with it? And of course, the gurus of opinion-mongering all have their analyses and prescriptions.

     It seems to me that the old investors’ maxim – “Past performance is no guarantee of future returns” – has some relevance here. Past performance doesn’t guarantee anything, but it’s all the information we have. Besides, the technical analysts have their maxim too: “The trend is your friend.” So we tend to steer by the winds we know.

     While no one in the Right wanted to see the Democrats take control on Capitol Hill, midterm elections tend to disfavor the party whose man is in the White House. So there were reasons to believe that the Left would make some gains. Given the thinness of the majorities the GOP enjoyed in both Houses, the loss of those majorities was, if not guaranteed, possible at least and probable if we go by the polls.

     But matters were graver than we thought. The fecklessness of the Republican caucuses disgusted many conservatives and Republican partisans. The GOP needed more voter turnout than it got. When a substantial fraction of “your voters” stay home, you tend to lose seats in Congress. Funny about that.

     How could it have been otherwise? Voter turnout is determined by voter engagement, and the Republican-led Congress gave us little to engage with. Blame is being heaped on a few prominent figures – Trump and Thune lead the list – but deeper understanding requires a deeper look.

     The Republican pattern is a “do nothing” pattern. The GOP has squandered its majorities since the era of Coolidge. This time around was different only in this: President Trump was expected to get them into motion. But the 119th Congress was indisposed to being mobilized for the Trump agenda.

     Sad as it is to say, that was predictable. After all, the successes of the first Trump Administration were largely produced by executive orders. The Republican caucuses of those four years were as intractable as those of the 119th Congress. The reasons are largely the same in both cases.

     A substantial number of Congressional Republicans dislike Trump and his agenda. Some didn’t want to support him. Others didn’t want to be seen supporting him. Trump’s titular leadership of the Republican Party meant little to them, for they had made careers out of their offices. Presidents can’t do that.

     Add that to Republicans’ notorious aversion to media criticism and their pusillanimity before the slanders of the Left. Add also the “don’t rock the boat” mentality that’s characterized Republican political performance since FDR. Add finally GOP nervousness about being blamed for anything that might go wrong following substantial policy changes. Given all that, would it have been reasonable to expect Republican gains in Congress?

     So here we are. What’s next?

     I expect we’ll have to endure another attempt to remove Trump from the White House. Worse, several anti-Trump Republicans will sign onto it. He probably will be impeached yet again, though he’s unlikely to be removed. His hands will be tied concerning Iran and the Middle East. He may be impeded in other areas of foreign policy as well.

     The bloodbath will also fuel the rise of contenders for the presidency who stand apart from Trump’s “Make America Great Again” agenda. They’ll point to the losses of November 3, 2026 as evidence that “it wasn’t want the nation wanted.” While attention has focused on J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio, expect the camera lenses to be pulled toward other figures that gain popular traction. The MAGA movement, such as it is, is likely to fragment as those new figures emerge.

     This is not an argument against the Trump agenda. It’s merely a forecast of the dynamics the bloodbath will evoke. If there’s a lesson for conservative-inclined voters, it would be this:

     If we want changes to federal policy, we must change federal policymakers. The opportunity to do that comes during the primaries, not on Election Day.

     Perhaps we’ll find stouter hearts and sincerer tongues to represent us two years hence. If it’s to be so, it’s time to get working on it now.

     Oh yes, there’s this as well: Buy ammo. Just in case, you understand.

The Political Problem, Distilled To Its Essence

     A lot of people are justifiably disgusted with the total nonperformance of the Republican Party since President Trump returned to the Oval Office. That’s given rise to the notion that maybe we can only awaken the GOP to its responsibilities by punishing it: i.e., by refusing to support its candidates in the 2026 midterms, and perhaps in the 2028 elections as well.

     Consider the following rejoinder to that suggestion:

Tell me how you win.

I wave a magic wand *poof* The Democrats now hold all three branches of government comfortably, the Republicans are suitably chastised.

They feel great shame and sorrow over the loss.

Now the Left, firmly in bed with everyone from the cartels to the CCP to… https://t.co/TmWCWPBnLr

— BLACK DUMPLING™ (@BlackDumpling) September 16, 2026

     Black Dumpling’s conclusion is worth highlighting:

     You have gotten everything you asked for Nick. It's all burned.
     Now, tell me how you win. Tell me this wasn't all just an exercise in sacrificing children to Moloch because you're disappointed in the Trump administration not doing enough or doing too much of the wrong thing.
     Tell me how you and "The Good Guys" wrestle back control via whatever means you suitably desire. But no wishes there, we need concrete answers.

     That, I propose, is the essence of our political problem.

* * *

     I have periods during which I feel much like BD’s interlocutor “Nick.” As William E. Simon put it in A Time For Truth, we have two major parties: the Evil Party and the Stupid Party…except that I don’t think the Republican Party, its elected officials, or its strategists are stupid. They just look it to a casual observer.

     Human nature tells us that in any situation that demands a decision, when a range of possibilities are available to an individual, he will naturally be most attracted by the course that most benefits him personally. That’s Mankind for you: we look first to ourselves and our well-being. Not a surprise, is it?

     Now consider the political dynamics that prevail in a legislature whose component districts have largely polarized. That is a configuration likely to emerge over time, as private citizens and businesses move about to serve their own interests. It prevails today in the United States: the great majority of Congressional districts and states are regarded as “red” or “blue.” For a “red” candidate to defeat the “blue” one in a “blue” locale, or vice-versa, is significantly against the odds.

     The consequence is a steadily increasing indifference toward the perceived values and desires of voters. The elected official, having the backing of the party most aligned with his district, feels safe in his seat. Barring “being caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy,” he trusts in his perpetuation in office. He feels he can confidently pursue and defend his personal interests without fear of electoral reversal.

     Today, the majority of the GOP Congressional caucus represents such safe districts. Overall indifference to such minor considerations as the party platform and the values it espouses is only to be expected. Why risk funding, bad press, or the loss of admission to high Washington society just to act on a campaign promise? Especially as you have “strength in numbers:” i.e., you can claim that the fault lies with the rest of your caucus, deflecting the odium from yourself.

     When election time nears, you can play the game called “Vote for me or you’ll get him! He and his party are The Enemy. They’re a threat to your values! I, your Republican stalwart, am the only defense against what they want to do to you.”

     That dynamic synergizes with the natural corruptibility of men whose principal drive is for power over others. Having become safe in their seats, their attention veers ever more toward possibilities for personal gain at public expense.

     “Well, well, it’s all very natural, Wormwood.”

* * *

     More than the above, what pro-freedom Americans want to know is what we can do about it. Sadly, the answer is: Barring a successful revolution, not bloody much.

     The major parties are effectively impossible to depose. There are only two, and voting Democrat is unthinkable. Voting for a minor party isn’t quite as bad as voting Democrat, but it doesn’t advance the defense of what remains of your freedom, your property, or your Constitutional republic. You’re caught between the would-be despoilers of your country and a gaggle of men who will mount a token resistance to them.

     Moreover, the major parties have established de facto control over the electoral mechanisms. They’re entrenched; they “own” the media and the major conduits of funding. Note that during election reporting, the minor parties are ignored almost completely. There are a significant number of people who can’t even name a minor party, much less its candidates for office.

     I speak from experience here. I was once an official of the Libertarian Party. Even if we omit consideration of the predominance of marginal personalities in that party – it’s fallen a long way since the days of John Hospers, Roger MacBride, David Berglund, and Ed Clark – the party exists mainly to provide a relief valve of sorts to the most disgruntled citizens. The other minor parties are about equally ineffectual.

* * *

     Electoral politics offers very little hope to the pro-freedom / limited-government advocate. Your defense of yourself, your values, and your personal interests practically compels you to vote Republican. Yet if you’re not a cockeyed optimist, you’re aware, even if only subconsciously, that you can’t expect significant improvements. Even when the GOP controls all three branches of the federal government, the likelihood of major reductions in taxation, spending, regulation, oppression by law, and the general politicization of American life is vanishingly small. Republicans have little incentive to do anything constructive. They’ll deny votes to Democrats and keep their seats warm, but little else.

     We who miss what America was are looking at a bleak future.

A Monitory Message For America

     If you enjoy historical fiction, you may already be familiar with the work of Taylor Caldwell. Her great historical novels are among the foremost gems of that field. But Caldwell wasn’t just a writer of historical fiction. Her novel Dialogues With The Devil is a particularly striking work that I would recommend without hesitation to any Christian. Her novel The Devil’s Advocate, about a near-future Communized America, is equally impactful.

     Taylor Caldwell was a thinker – an impassioned one.

     What follows is an article Caldwell published in 1957. I stumbled upon it not long ago. I was massively impressed by her insight, for the article speaks, softly yet quite audibly, of a nation that permitted itself to be overcome by envy, sloth, and the desire for power… a nation gone from the world, and only dimly remembered today.

---

The Story of Honoria

     This is a true story about a nation which was once great. At the outset, we will call that nation Honoria; but you will readily guess her true name, as the story unfolds.

     Once upon a time, some courageous men decided to leave their own country, which did not encourage freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and freedom of the individual. They wanted to establish a new country where men could be free.

     So, these men who wanted freedom became Pilgrims. They migrated to an uncivilized land inhabited only by barbarians, enduring terrible hardship to get there. When they landed in that savage region, they stood upon a great rock. There, they did homage to their God -- for guiding them during their arduous journey.

     To this day, that rock is one of the most famous monuments in the world.

     Pilgrim Fathers

     The Pilgrims weren't very kind to the natives of the region; but kindness is not usually an attribute of the human race, not even among just men earnestly seeking freedom and justice for themselves. They drove off the natives, and built their rude shelters in the inhospitable wilderness. They also engaged in flurries of small wars and massacres with the natives, and they went armed into the fields to set their crops and take care of their cattle. They taught their wives and half-grown children how to handle arms and protect themselves when the men were away.

     One of the first things these Pilgrims did was to build a house of worship in the wilderness -- a crude, rude house, but still a house of worship. There they would gather, not just on holy days, but every day, to pray. They had a special day in the year, too, to give thanks for their blessings; and they would walk through the silent fields and wild forests on that day, armed and watchful against the savages.

     The Pilgrims were stern and austere men. They believed in their God, but they also believed in work -- hard, driving, determined work. They established schools, under religious leaders. These schools, in a way, were the first public, free education in the world -- education such as had never been before in the old, corrupt countries.

     The old, corrupt countries laughed at the Pilgrims -- laughed at their poverty, their hard work, their educational efforts, their single-hearted devotion to religion, their dedication to a simple, strenuous, virtuous life. In fact, in one of the old countries, a famous playwright wrote a most amusing play on the Pilgrims -- a sensationally funny piece that brought many honors to the playwright. You can still read his play today, if you wish.

     People in the old countries -- rich and decadent -- called the Pilgrims savages. They did not know that these Pilgrims -- these obscure, work-stained men; these men with the soil of the earth under their fingernails; these men in their rude shelters -- would, through their descendants, build the most powerful nation in the world, one to which the old, corrupt countries would look in envy, hatred and contempt while they demanded more and more support for their tottering governments, their tyrannies, and their starving people.

     The Pilgrims were intolerant of wrongdoing. They used whips and gallows to punish criminals. Their clergymen preached stern virtue and selfless dedication. They had no patience with the weak and degenerate, who, if they are pampered, become the cancer of a nation. And, as the Pilgrims had endured so much to come so far, there was no place in their community for those who would destroy them and what they were building.

     The Pilgrims engaged in trade as their community grew. They set sails on the ocean. More Pilgrims joined them. They became moderately prosperous. But still they retained the severity and devotion of their lives, dressed very simply, loved the good earth which nourished them, gathered in their churches for prayer. Their tiny villages became small towns, and then small cities. All this took a long time.

     Other colonists came and established other colonies -- over a period of more than three hundred years. But these colonies, and the colonies of the Pilgrims, were not yet one nation. They were small, unintegrated colonies under the shadow of powerful nations, from which the colonists had fled.

     But all the colonists had one thing in common: They had fled from oppression, hoping to live in peace, with as much justice as men can dredge up from themselves. They had had all they could take of endless wars, endless taxation, endless bureaucrats, endless arrogant rulers. In the sight of their God, as they wrote over and over, they had established a new nation.

     Over three hundred years went by. The colonies were flourishing everywhere. The breath of freedom blew over them like a mighty wind, clear, sharp, invigorating, stirring men's souls, lighting up their hearts, strengthening their arms, making their spirits incandescent.

     Some of the noblest literature ever written by men was created in those colonies, some of the noblest architecture, some of the noblest precepts. Facades of our modern government buildings bear some of the legends written in those days: "Liberty," "justice," "freedom of worship."

     The cobbled streets of the colonial cities began to ring with the footsteps of great men, with the sound of heroic voices. A new day was dawning in this cluster of colonies I have called Honoria.

     Eventually the Pilgrims -- those severe, strict men -- became more tolerant of their neighbors, and did business with them. They sent their best writers, best artisans, best agriculturists, to the other colonies, and in return received a little laughter and gaiety. For three hundred years that went on; and God blessed the colonies, this new nation, not yet one nation, which I have called Honoria.

     Three hundred years -- and then the terror.

     Colonies Unite

     One of the old, corrupt countries, greedy for exploitation, despising the simplicity and moral laws of the colonies, and anxious to tax them and put them once more under oppression, sent tax agents to the big city of the Pilgrims.

     Word of the terror ran through the colonies like the sound of a drum awakening freemen to the knowledge of peril. The colonies sent their greatest men as representatives to a general assembly of all the colonies. They knew that their destinies lay together. They looked about for a leader, and found him: a prosperous gentleman farmer, a man concerned only with agriculture, but a man of learning. Above all, he was a man. They sent representatives to him, as he stood in his fields, with his hand on the plow. He shook the dust of the fields from his feet and went to the city.

     One of the most famous cities of the United States is named after him. He became known as "the father of his country."

     Now, this man united the colonies. This noble man -- who will never be forgotten so long as free men dare to speak -- won his fight against corrupt politicians, and he returned to his fields.

     The united colonies became a nation -- Honoria. The day of their great and growing power had dawned.

     The new nation had two houses of government. The more powerful was the Senate. No one could be elected to the Senate unless he was a man of probity, honor, patriotism, and religion. But that was in the early days of the Republic. For Honoria was a Republic, though she is a Republic no longer. Honoria, in those days, distrusted militarism, hated wars. Her ideal was freedom under divine guidance.

     The Senators knew that they must support the Republic and shun intrigue with foreign nations -- or suffer severe punishment. For a long time, a very long time, the Senators did not betray their people.

     A civil war ultimately divided the Republic, a bloody, fratricidal war. A leader of the Republic was assassinated. He had led the country in a war to keep the nation united, but he had enemies. Many plays and books have been written about this leader. I do not argue for or against this man who was assassinated in the warm spring of the year, in the very shadow of government buildings. You have read about him; you have seen him in moving pictures, and on television. He was murdered, and one of the greatest playwrights of all time immortalized him in a noble play. One of his most trusted friends, a general of the army of the Republic, avenged his death most terribly; and Honoria never really did recover from that vengeance, and that death.

     Honoria, after that bloody civil war, and after many men were executed because of it, suddenly and mysteriously changed direction. She was a real power in the world now. The old, corrupt countries, which had hoped to see her divided and ruined by the civil war, had to take her into their calculations, although she was still being called vulgar and uncultured and gross.

     The old, corrupt countries sent ambassadors to Honoria. Tens of thousands of immigrants came to Honoria from the old countries. Many of them went like the ancient Pilgrims, fleeing from oppression. But many came because Honoria was rich, and they cared nothing for her traditions.

     Prosperity does not automatically bring virtue, nor does it always sustain it. Honoria was powerful. Her ships ranged everywhere.

     Many of her Senators became ambitious, and ambition for power brought corruption. They began to make deals with leaders of important factions. They became arrogant, and often depraved. They forgot their Spartan beginnings. They began to sneer at the Pilgrims and their severe laws and austerities. The Senators, many of them, became rich in worldly goods, but very poor in knowledge of what had made their nation great. They began to despise the very Republic for which they stood. For a price, they would even betray their country.

     The Republic, which had grown strong by not engaging in foreign entanglements, now became entangled. What was the purpose of the entanglements? Oh, the leaders said alliances were necessary to defend the civilized world -- but the real purpose was to satisfy the greedy ambitions and allay the sickly fears of the leaders.

     The alliances brought wars, and the wars brought taxes. But the citizens of Honoria did not resist, because war also brought an increase in trade and industry.

     The citizens of Honoria, blissfully enjoying their new prosperity, did not mind the taxation -- at first. Their leaders had told them it would be imposed only "on the rich fellows," the "fellows with big houses and servants." The silly citizens nodded their heads soberly. Let the rich fellows pay and support the rest of the country.

     The citizens were beginning to think of security. They wanted public auditoriums for sports, paid for by tax money. They wanted bigger and better roads. They wanted pensions, support at public expense when they felt disinclined to work. And more and more citizens were becoming disinclined to work. Farms? That was for the horses! Industrious toil? That was for the stupid.

     Now the farmers moved into the scene. They were resentful of the special interest groups in the city. They sent petitions to their Senators. They demanded subsidies, price supports. The Senators, wanting support for their own schemes, passed laws granting subsidies for the farmers; and the government bought up surplus crops and stored them in warehouses, where they rotted away. Now the industrialists moved in -- they must have tax benefits. It never occurred to them -- or perhaps it did -- that taxation in itself was an evil.

     Finally, government, urged on by greedy groups and minorities, became the all-powerful state. It guaranteed to protect the people from all the forces of nature -- floods, hurricanes, land-slides, failure of crops. And taxation grew and grew.

     Death of the Middle Class

     Honoria had always been distinguished by a strong, sturdy, industrious middle class, composed of farmers, artisans, shopkeepers -- virtuous and sane and devout. But the middle class presented a threat to an all-powerful government, determined to protect the rich and the strong -- and the worthless, the mean, the haters-of-work, the whining cowards who wanted everything for nothing. So the government decided to get rid of the middle class.

     The middle class of Honoria stood in the way; it must be destroyed. Then, the elite could rule by oppression; and the craven, the despicable, the cowards, the worthless, could live on the bodies of the nobles and the heroic -- through taxation.

     But the greedy mobs could never be satisfied. They made endless demands on the Senators. They stood in government offices and howled. They howled for subsidized housing. And they got it.

     The government, corrupt and vile, subsidized housing, for "low income groups." It built huge projects in the very heart of the city for the mobs -- with swimming pools, of course, and hot free food. Within a year or two, those housing projects became slums, for people with slum personalities inhabited them. The swimming pools collected garbage. But still the howl went up for more and more; and the Senators, now the creatures of the mobs, tried to provide everything the mobs demanded.

     And the middle class, the backbone of the nation? They were reduced to despair. They dared not have children; they couldn't afford them. While the mob enjoyed their public housing, their free sports, their free meals, the middle class worked ceaselessly, trying to get ahead of their tax bills, trying to live, trying to keep their schools alive for their children. It was all no use. They began to dwindle away. They had to leave their houses. The mobs moved into their houses and turned them into slum dwellings. Crime became so commonplace that it was dangerous to be on the streets at night. Morality was dead.

     The middle class, the hardworking, the self-reliant, slowly smothered from despair. Who cared? The mob had a full belly today and government promised to fill it again tomorrow.

     The monstrous state, the top-heavy bureaucracy, was happy. The cynical laughed among themselves. Freedom? Why, the people didn't want freedom. They wanted free entertainment, free bread, free housing. A degenerate nation deserved no freedom, no consideration.

     But ere long there was no laughter, even among the cynical. The politicians, who had begun by manipulating the mobs, became tools of the mobs. The productive citizens were taxed more and more to provide benefits for the worthless.

     An evil old man, crippled and malformed, led the nation into more wars and foreign entanglements -- he was the ruler of Honoria. Patriots were considered scoundrels. The rulers of Honoria were tools not only of the mobs, but of foreigners.

     An old general, who had been victimized by the government, stood up and cried aloud to Honoria to remember her past, to return to honor, to decent government, to the principles of the Founding Fathers, to God. The people hooted: He was a reactionary. He was eliminated. He retired, with bitterness, and thought his anguished thoughts.

     A Senator dared to stand up in the Senate and cry a halt to foreign subversion of Honoria and to constant foreign aid and the draining away of the people's money. Other Senators shrieked him down and called him vile names. He, too, was liquidated. And the nation fell deeper and deeper into debt, became more luxurious and rotten.

     Honoria joined a league of the world, with her enemies. They exploited her. She taxed her citizens more and more to send her wheat and meat to those nations.

     In one of Honoria's stupid wars she allied herself with powerful barbarians who were full of hatred and envy, and the lust for power. Honoria sent "experts" to the barbarians to teach them the latest scientific discoveries.

     Honoria had become a corrupt and monstrous nation. Foreign tyrants and domestic mobs called the tune, and the spineless rulers of Honoria danced. The very walls of government echoed to the ever-growing demands for more foreign aid, more security, more bread, more sports, more government, more restrictions on the proud and the self-respecting.

     And the middle class finally died.

     And what of the barbarians? They looked on Honoria with contempt. They were fierce and dedicated men. They had allies in the government of Honoria. Who could oppose them, with their savage ferocity? The time had come for them to take over Honoria, and destroy civilization.

     And the barbarians moved in.

     Who had made the barbarians so strong? Honoria, of course. Honoria had given the barbarians access to the wealth of Honoria, at the expense of the betrayed and ruined citizens of Honoria. Honoria had sacrificed her people so that her alleged allies could make common cause against her with the barbarians.

     Road to Ruin

     What is the real name of Honoria?

     Ancient Rome.

     You know what happened to ancient Rome. The barbarians, in the fifth century, invaded Rome and destroyed her; and for hundreds of years, there was a long, black night of slavery and despair and ruin. Rome had not only betrayed herself but all the civilized world with her. The barbarians ranged over that civilized world; and the cultures of thousands of years were destroyed, so that only fragments have come down to us, mere fragments of great and mighty literature, and law, and beauty.

     Fortunately, one thing did survive: The Twelve Tables of Common Roman Law. For that we can thank the early Christians. Those Tables of Law formed the basis of English Common Law and, more indirectly, of the American Constitution.

     Had Rome retained her Constitution, she would perhaps have survived and her splendor would not have been extinguished. But she permitted the slow erosion of her Constitution, just as we are permitting the quicker erosion of our Constitution.

     Everything which strikes at our Constitution brings us closer to death as a free nation, just as Rome died. Each time a new treaty of alliance is signed with foreign nations, we die a little more, as Rome died. Each time the Supreme Court or the President violates the Constitution, we come closer to slavery -- as Rome came.

     Nearly two thousand years stand between us and Rome. Never before the rise of Rome, and never since, did two nations so remarkably resemble each other, in history, in splendid rise in civilization, in magnificent communication between nations, in grandeur and wealth. In strange and amazing ways, we are the counterpart of ancient Rome. Her history, almost step by step, is our history.

     Shall we continue along the path which led to the extinction of Rome? We have made her terrible mistakes; we have duplicated her crimes and stupidities, almost to the letter. We are destroying our Constitution, the only safeguard we have in the face of domestic and foreign enemies, just as she destroyed hers. We are permitting government by men, now, instead of government by law -- just as Rome finally did.

     So long as Rome remained Rome -- patriotic, proud, virtuous and healthy -- she remained a strong and powerful nation. When she became internationalistic, underwrote the economies of other nations, permitted her rulers to become dictators, enmeshed herself with the problems of aliens and taxed her own people to support those aliens, she began to die.

     When she became militaristic, and had her armies spread on foreign soil, the fabric of her life was weakened and strained, and the wild sword of the barbarian cut it easily.

     It is a stern fact of history that no nation that rushed to the abyss ever turned back. Not ever, in the long history of the world. We are now on the edge of the abyss. Can we, for the first time in history, turn back? It is up to you.

     ________________________________________

A few notes on similarities:

• The "prosperous gentleman farmer" who responded to the call of duty and saved his country in a time of crisis, who became known as "the father of his country," and in whose honor a famous American city was named ... was the ancient Roman, Cincinnatus.
• The "evil old man, crippled and malformed," who led his nation into wars and foreign entanglements, was Caligula, Emperor of Rome.
• The "old general, who had been victimized by the government," and who "stood up and cried aloud" for his country "to remember her past, to return to honor," was Mark Antony.
• The Senator who "dared to stand up in the Senate and cry a halt to foreign subversion" of his country, while "other Senators shrieked him down," was Cicero.
• The "great rock", comparable to Plymouth Rock in American history, was the rock which became the foundation of the Temple of Jupiter in Ancient Rome.

---

     That was Taylor Caldwell speaking, in 1957. Please reflect on her foresight, and what it means for us today.

     “Give a nation war and she’ll be only too happy to surrender the sentimentality of freedom.” -- Taylor Caldwell, The Devil's Advocate, 1952

Influencers, Those They Influence, And Those Who Influence Them

     I have to run off to a dentist’s appointment in a little while, so this will be a quickie. We speak of “influencers” today as if opinion-forming bellwethers were a new phenomenon. Sorry, they aren’t. However, due to developments in communications, especially in the digital realm, the subject has acquired a scope far greater than it would have been in the radio years or the early television years.

     This morning, a significant voice on Second Amendment rights has applied his intellect to understanding the divergence between the influence of influencers – sorry, Gentle Reader – and actual electoral performance:

     Braden Langley might seem a bit rough-hewn, but he’s highly intelligent and has put a lot of time into studying the currents that run through American politics. His thesis in the above is simple, but it wouldn’t occur to persons who take opinion polls and the follower counts of influencers as something primary, impervious to question. “Influence” in real-world terms diverges greatly from the undifferentiated aggregates commanded by persons who reach and appeal to global audiences.

     Influencers are themselves influenced by their followers. If the followers trend Leftward, they will exert a significant force on the influencer to position himself to the Left. He has a natural incentive to retain his existing followers and attract new ones. Money is often involved through advertising and sponsorships. The global audience made possible by the Internet is far more Left-inclined than the one that votes in American elections.

     Remember back in 2004, when foreign figures such as Richard Dawkins and David Cornwall (a.k.a. “John LeCarre”) tried to persuade Americans to elect John Kerry to the presidency rather than George W. Bush? It didn’t work; Left-inclined foreign voices don’t appeal to many Americans. But superficial attention to how many persons admire those figures, without attention to where the majority of those persons are situated and whether they can vote in American elections, misled many casual observers. (Perhaps some wanted to be misled, but that subject is beyond the scope of this tirade.)

     Americans are not easily led by persons who don’t share American values. But influencers, including American commentators who command large audiences of faceless followers, are a different story. This might just be another way of phrasing the old maxim “follow the money,” but what of that?

     Have a nice day.

Unthinkable Or Inevitable?

     After the parliamentary systems piece appeared, I got an inquiry from a reader about religious affiliations among political parties. He wanted to know whether there were other parties that explicitly aligned themselves with specific religions.

     It’s a subject of some interest, yet I’d never actually researched it. So I took the lazy man’s way out: I asked Google’s powerful AI component, Gemini:

(My query:) What European political parties are explicitly aligned with a particular religion?

European political parties aligned with religion include Christian democratic and small confessional parties like the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in Germany, the Christian Democrats in Sweden, and the Christian Union in the Netherlands. While major historical parties have evolved into broad-based centrist groups, explicitly faith-based and niche religious parties still operate at national and European levels. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Christian Democratic and Conservative Parties

• Christian Democratic Union (CDU) / Christian Social Union (CSU) (Germany): Historically confessional and explicitly rooted in Christian ethics, though it now functions as a broad center-right "catch-all" party. [1, 2, 3]
• Christian Union (ChristenUnie) (Netherlands): An explicitly orthodox Protestant party that bases its practical policies directly on the Bible. [1]
• Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) (Netherlands): A traditional center-right party formed from a merger of historic Protestant and Catholic parties. [1, 2]
• Christian Democrats (Kristdemokraterna) (Sweden): Centers its platform on Christian social ethics, family values, and human dignity. [1, 2]
• European Christian Political Party (ECPP): A transnational European political party uniting socially conservative, Christian-values-focused national parties across the continent. [1]

Niche and Regional Confessional Parties

• SGP (Staatkundig Gereformeerde Partij) (Netherlands): A strict, traditional Calvinist party that advocates for governance explicitly based on biblical principles. [1, 2, 4]
• Islamic-oriented / Immigrant-focused groupings: While mainstream Islamic political parties do not hold major seats in Western Europe, smaller local or niche lists (such as Partij Ideal or various minor inclusion/diversity movements) occasionally organize around Muslim community interests, though most operate within secular frameworks or general immigrant-advocacy platforms rather than as formal theocratic entities. [1]

     Forgive me for not inserting the links. I’m sure that those who are deeply interested can find the references as easily as I did.

     These are pointers to a past Europe whose vestiges have not yet been erased. Europe was once called Christendom: “the land of Christ.” Its Christian heritage was once overwhelming, in testimony to which we have the innumerable beautiful cathedrals, other architecture, and works of Christian-influenced art, music, and sculpture for which the Old World is known. That makes it especially sad that Europe has become so secular.

     North America, a heavily Christian continent, could be called Christendom with equal justice… but it isn’t. Heavily Catholic Mexico and heavily Christian America and Canada entitle the New World to that label, yet I cannot recall ever hearing it called that. North America just isn’t thought of that way, even though today its people are more Christian than their Old World cousins.

     I could go on in this vein, but I won’t. What I find myself wondering this morning is whether there will ever be a recognized political party in America that openly aligns itself with any religion. If one should arise, with which religion would it identify?

     The most plausible answer is not pleasant. Neither is the political direction in which such a party would be most likely to take us. And with that, I shall wish all my Gentle Readers a very nice day.

A Word About Parliamentary Systems

     There aren’t many polities structured as is the United States. Most other First World nations have parliamentary systems, which vary from the American Constitutional model in several important ways:

1. The legislature is elected at irregular intervals.
2. The executive branch is not elected; the dominant party or coalition in the legislature determines the control of the executive.
3. Within limits, the executive determines when elections will next occur.
4. All members of the executive have seats in the legislature.

     The progenitor of modern parliamentary systems was England of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Note that its descendant, the United Kingdom of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, lacks a written Constitution. Long ago I read a claim from a British commentator to the effect that the lack makes British parliamentarianism “superior” to the American system. His argument was that a written Constitution “can be an impediment to doing what’s needed.” I have no idea if that commentator is still alive; if so, I’d like to ask him if he feels the same today.

     Parliamentary systems are friendly to small parties. That’s because there are no national elections; the voter votes only for local officials and his member in the legislature. Thus, elections tend to concentrate on local issues. Unfortunately, there are national issues, especially in a nation which lacks Constitutional guarantees of individual rights and limits on government. So it matters very much, as you’ve probably already guessed, who controls the national executive.

     In the practical realm, such a system will have two major parties, just as does the U.S. Those major parties will differ sharply in their policy prescriptions, just as do the Democrats and the Republicans. Yet in practice no major party will exercise complete control over the national agenda, whatever it may be, because it will need to form a coalition with one or more minor parties to achieve control of the executive.

     Those minor parties can be terribly difficult to control, even after their legislators have agreed to form a coalition with a major party. They know that they can bring down the executive by defecting. That gives them outsized political power – and that gives the major parties a strong incentive to find ways to dampen the influence of minor parties that are regarded as particularly fractious or unruly.

     So political dominance in a parliamentary system requires a coalition and mutually agreed suppression of minor parties regarded as unacceptable. This is an important political influence in Europe today. The reason is an effect similar to what’s happening in America: the major parties and the coalitions they build have demonstrably failed their peoples. Thus, new parties better attuned to popular sentiment are on the rise – and the major parties want nothing to do with them.

     The best observable example of this is Germany. Two parties, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Social Democratic Party (SDP), have dominated German governance for decades. But those parties, both of which are Euro-socialist, have largely lost the allegiance of German voters. The Alliance for Germany (AfD) has attracted so much support that, were free, fair, non-fraudulent elections to be held in Germany today, the AfD would outpoll the CDU and the SDP combined.

     But the AfD is explicitly nationalist. It’s also far less socialist than the older parties. That has thrown the ruling class of Germany, and indeed much of Europe, into a panic. Without German participation in and support of the European Union (EU), that union would dissolve. Continent-wide policies would cease to bind. Establishments throughout Europe would totter and fall.

     So the CDU and the SDP are straining to assemble a coalition whose sole purpose is to exclude the AfD from the selection of the German executive branch. They’re pleading for support from other European powers as well. Their sotto voce appeal is to stability. Whether German voters value stability more than national policies that strengthen Germany and ethnic Germans is uncertain.

     Analyst and commentator Haretina Kukuri, whom I admire greatly, has this to say:

     The CDU governs with a partner that blocks the reforms it needs. The SPD governs with a partner that demands them. Both leaderships are under internal fire. Neither can deliver anything, and neither can walk away, because there’s nowhere left to go.

     BUT if the AFD rules then we are talking about a divided Europe. They are against Europe as a union.

     Clearly, Haretina views that unfavorably. In a reply to a comment, she adds this:

     [B]e careful what you wish the AFD will take us some decades back

     Would the dissolution of the EU, a “mock,” pseudo-parliamentary federation of European nations headquartered in Brussels, whose policies have inflicted a great deal of damage on the Old World, really “take us some decades back?” “Us” being Germany and / or Europe, that is.

     I’d like to say that “German voters will decide,” but there’s a strong possibility that their preferences will be overridden by Germany’s courts, or ballot manipulation, or a continental “super-coalition” unprecedented in European political history. It’s happened in these United States. German nationalists must not imagine that “It can’t happen here.”

The Unwelcome Cup

     Once in a great while, a politician tells us something significant by doing nothing: more specifically, by not reaching for a seeming prize that would be his merely for the reaching. I have before me a historical reminder.

     In August of the Year of Our Lord 1914, when the great powers of Europe had decided to settle some minor issues by killing millions of their best and brightest, France was in a bit of turmoil. Several shattering defeats of France’s armies by German forces had greatly undermined the existing administration. Premier Rene Viviani decided to look for a few popular figures to buttress the government. His eye lit at once upon the man known as “the Tiger of France:” former prime minister Georges Benjamin Clemenceau.

     Clemenceau politely declined the honor:

     Viviani found [Clemenceau] in a “violent temper” and without desire to join a government he expected to be out of office in two weeks.
     “No, no, don’t count on me,” he said. “In a fortnight you will be torn to ribbons, I am not going to have anything to do with it.” After this “paroxysm of passion” he burst into tears, embraced Viviani, but continued to decline to join him in office.

     [Barbara Tuchman, The Guns of August]

     Politicians, however greedy for power, are nevertheless wary of traps that are baited with it. No one wants to be holding the baton when the Jacquerie kicks off, and at that moment in August 1914, popular sentiment was clearly inclined toward torches and pitchforks. Clemenceau, one of the ablest statesmen in Europe, could see that it was thus.

     Something similar is in progress in the United Kingdom. The current Labour government, headed by Sir Keir Starmer, has performed atrociously and seems likely to fall. However, a great deal of the odium for Labourite policies has fallen on Starmer personally. Labour’s “back room” has persuaded Starmer to resign his premiership: something of a “sop to Cerberus” so the rest of the administration might not fall as well.

     And so, there is a vacancy at Number 10 Downing Street. Who will be next to occupy that high post? Surely some grandee of the administration will put himself forward for the job. Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy? Defence Minister Dan Jarvis? Perhaps even Foreign Minister Yvette Cooper?

     Nope. None of them want it. Among the seated ministers, the lack of interest in accepting the mantle of leadership is total. In consequence, a brand new Member of the House of Commons from Manchester, Andy Burnham, is expected to take the post unopposed.

     That isn’t because Burnham has the glow of the heaven-sent upon him. He just hasn’t had any previous association with the sitting government. No one who has that taint wants the crosshairs upon him with the government in such dire straits. Burnham, whose highest previous office was as the mayor of Manchester, will be no better than Starmer – indeed, with no experience in Britain’s national administration he’s likely to be well out of his depth – but the strategists and kingmakers of the Labour Party are happy to let him be the focus of popular attention for a while.

     I don’t expect much. I didn’t expect much when Boris Johnson rose to the premiership. The national government of the United Kingdom is even more dominated by unelected civil servants than is the federal government of these United States. “Permanent secretaries” and their staffers get their way in the same fashion as do American bureaucrats: by simply ignoring the elected and appointed officials nominally over them. Radical changes are highly unlikely.

     It’s those bureaucrats who constitute the true and enduring government of Britain. Their primary interests are in continuity, both in policy and in personnel. They know full well that for practical purposes, their positions are guaranteed. They will move, or refuse to move, in whatever fashion preserves those interests.

     Politicians come and go; bureaucrats are forever.

     The Sceptered Isle has been in difficulties for some time. Those difficulties are destined to deepen further. It’s a pity, for America has – or had – much in common with Britain. But with every figure of note unwilling to challenge the untried Burnham for the helm, inertia will be the only victor… and inertia always points downhill.

An Intellectual's Duty

     [This piece first appeared at Eternity Road on March 12, 2008. -- FWP]

---

     There aren't many persons who, if asked whether significantly above-average intelligence could ever be a liability rather than an asset, would answer in the affirmative. That's because there aren't many persons with significantly above-average intelligence.

     Yes, you read that right. You have to be pretty smart to understand why smarts aren't a good fit for every context and every occupation. One of Jack L. Chalker's Flux and Anchor books presents a penetrating example. In it, a woman who has earned a large boon from a powerful wizard asks him to use his power to make her permanently happy and carefree. The wizard plies a spell that strips her of her memory, halves her intelligence, and turns her into an uncritical, limitlessly willing sexual plaything -- the simplest conceivable satisfaction of her request.

     True, most of us wouldn't aspire to that position. But some would, and dare anyone say (from a purely secular perspective) that to choose such a life would be wrong? Happiness and peace of mind are fleeting things; all but a few truly fortunate persons possess them only in snatches. Aldous Huxley is reported to have been greatly troubled by the number of persons who viewed his Brave New World, in which the overwhelmingly greater part of the population of the world was engineered for subnormal intelligence and high susceptibility to a happiness-inducing drug, as a depiction of a true Utopia.

     Still, there's that "Better Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied" business. Most persons of high intelligence wouldn't sacrifice it for anything, not even a greatly prolonged, blissfully happy life. In part, it's because high intelligence enables the owner to imagine and pursue fulfillments inaccessible to the less gifted. In even larger part, it's because the esteem generally attached to intellectual power greatly stokes one's self-regard.

     High intelligence is a tool that can work many wonders. We owe much of our comfort and security to the insights of a few dozen geniuses. But that doesn't make a genius suitable for a position only a dullard can fit.

---

     Just this morning, your Curmudgeon stumbled upon the following at co-conspirator Travis Corcoran's site:

NZC: Didn’t Spitzer want to be president someday? So, that’s totally in the toilet.

     TJIC: One American disqualified for the office…only 299,999,999 more to go!

     NZC: And you’re allowed to say that, because you’re leading from the front - you’ve totally disqualified yourself a dozen times over.

     TJIC: Yeah, that whole “dig up the corpse of FDR, and then !@#% in his skull” blogging topic would totally come back to bite me in the primaries.

     NZC: Indeed!

     TJIC: …unless I ran as a Libertarian…

     It was good for a chuckle, but your Curmudgeon sincerely hopes that Travis is aware that his high intelligence disqualifies him from any and all public offices.

     What's that you say? You want very intelligent people in government? You, sir, are a hazard to the body politic. What on Earth are you doing at Eternity Road? Don't you know what sort of mischief smart people get up to when entrusted with power? Didn't we get enough of a demonstration from the Clintons? Do you really want a reprise of that disaster?

     No. No smart people in office. Please! Smart people are too good at reinterpreting their marching orders and rationalizing their way around moral or Constitutional constraints on their authority. If any of the Founding Fathers was a genius, Thomas Jefferson was -- yet he, most libertarian of them all, violated the Constitution's constraints on federal power several times in his first term of office. He rationalized his transgressions as "necessary" and "practical." So highly did Congress, and the people generally, think of him that he always carried the day.

     High intelligence is almost always accompanied by a high opinion of oneself. He who thinks that well of himself is all too easily led to see himself as above the rules that bind others. If you were looking for a capsule summary of Eliot Spitzer's downfall, you have it now.

     What Americans should seek in their public officials is men who can understand the duties and limitations of their offices, and will cleave to them unswervingly. This demands a routinier, an "organization man," a dullard. It's not the right billet for a genius. Very bright people chafe at taking orders, even from brighter, more knowledgeable people; they're always looking for an angle, a way to finesse their way out of doing what they've been told.

     The duties of an elected official are spelled out in either the Constitution of the United States, or some similar charter subordinate to it. The powers that attach to whatever government his office pertains to are spelled out in a similar fashion, albeit not always with the degree of specificity a libertarian-conservative would like. If those rules and constraints are seriously meant, then we don't want our officeholders looking for ways to chisel around the edges. We want good, solid dullards, schooled from the Bible and the handle of a broom, who'll do as they're told, without the slightest trace of creativity.

     We don't often get such men, these days.

---

     The word "intellectual" has acquired an unsavory connotation these past few decades. It deserves that connotation rather more than not. Intellectuals in the corridors of power, rich in self-regard and flushed with ambition to leave their footprints upon history, have wreaked great harm upon American liberty and our Constitutional order. But we were foolish enough to admit them, so the blame lies at least as much on us.

     Restoring the original Constitutional compact has proved dauntingly difficult. Once government opens niches for men of intellect, those niches prove damnably difficult to close. There's always an argument for genius in the power seat, usually that it's necessary if we're ever to undo the damage wrought by prior geniuses. Even when it's tragically wrong, it can be too seductive to resist.

     But an intellectual's duty is to resist. If the word "duty" has an objective meaning, a man of genius should feel a duty to move toward those fields where his gifts will bring good to the world, rather than to a post where others will have to pay for his mistakes. For even geniuses make mistakes. Indeed, they make more of them, and more rapidly, than persons of average attainments.

     Sadly, in our current milieu, wherein the achievements of an Edison or a Tesla are reckoned as grubby commerce while "high office" earns the highest of plaudits, too many bright fellows are drawn toward the profession of politics. But power doesn't merely corrupt; it attracts the already corrupt and corruptible. Thus, it's in the nature of political power that those with the weakest morals will be the most successful.

     This is not the time or place for the exploration of so perverse a situation; among other things, your Curmudgeon hasn't yet had enough to drink. Suffice it to say that we've created incentives that divert high intelligence away from its proper applications -- science, commerce, and philosophy -- and into the quest for power over others. Those incentives are self-reinforcing; they can only be unmade by the creation of even stronger counter-incentives, at whose nature we cannot yet guess. For the present, due to the excessive adulation of the hoi polloi for the conspicuously gifted, we're doomed to be ruled by persons of low morality protected by high intellect. It's the worst situation we could have contrived for ourselves.

     To young Americans seeking a suitable course in life:

• If you're smart, go into business.
• If you're very smart, go into the sciences.
• If you're not smart, but were properly raised and can follow clear, simple directions, there may be a spot for you in government.
• If you're a Certified Galactic Intellect...how about a nice game of chess?

---

     [Having reread and reflected on the above -- hey, what do you do at 4:00 AM when the dogs won't let you sleep? -- it occurs to me that a review of our recent, supposedly smart chief executives is in order:

• Woodrow Wilson: World War I, huge expansion of the federal government, the income tax, the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Amendments.
• Franklin D. Roosevelt: The "Brain Trust," a thirteen-year economic contraction, World War II, the destruction of the Constitution's restraints on the federal government.
• John F. Kennedy: The Bay of Pigs, hot and cold running prostitutes, and the elevation of the detestable, wholly amoral Kennedy family to a kind of American aristocracy.
• Bill Clinton: Semen-stained dresses and bombed-out aspirin factories in Sudan.
• Barack Hussein Obama: Please!

     Any questions?]

Berserk, Or Merely Bookless?

     [The following first appeared at Eternity Road on February 25, 2008 – FWP.]

---

     Your Curmudgeon strongly disapproves of psychologizing one's political or ideological adversary. For those unfamiliar with the term, "psychologizing" is the attribution of motives, character defects, or mental or emotional aberrations to one's adversary as the "real reasons" for his positions, instead of arguing against them on objective grounds. Persons who do such things are all too obviously seriously disturbed, dangerous to themselves and others, no doubt damaged by their toilet training traumas or failure to resolve their Oedipal conflicts before attaining puberty.

     Hm. Well, anyway, by way of Cassy Fiano at Wizbang comes this example of the practice from a conservative, aimed (of course) at liberals:

     Just when liberals thought it was safe to start identifying themselves as such, an acclaimed, veteran psychiatrist is making the case that the ideology motivating them is actually a mental disorder.

     "Based on strikingly irrational beliefs and emotions, modern liberals relentlessly undermine the most important principles on which our freedoms were founded," says Dr. Lyle Rossiter, author of the new book, "The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness." "Like spoiled, angry children, they rebel against the normal responsibilities of adulthood and demand that a parental government meet their needs from cradle to grave."...

     Dr. Rossiter says the liberal agenda preys on weakness and feelings of inferiority in the population by:

• creating and reinforcing perceptions of victimization;
• satisfying infantile claims to entitlement, indulgence and compensation;
• augmenting primitive feelings of envy;
• rejecting the sovereignty of the individual, subordinating him to the will of the government.

     "The roots of liberalism - and its associated madness - can be clearly identified by understanding how children develop from infancy to adulthood and how distorted development produces the irrational beliefs of the liberal mind," he says. "When the modern liberal mind whines about imaginary victims, rages against imaginary villains and seeks above all else to run the lives of persons competent to run their own lives, the neurosis of the liberal mind becomes painfully obvious."

     This is no more valid an approach to political argument than it was when liberal-leaning "scholars" in the University of California system claimed that their study proves that conservatives are inherently fear-ridden and deficient of imagination.

     Back about fifteen years ago, your Curmudgeon first heard the political Left styled "bookless." It was an apt characterization, and remains so today. The Left has run through all its ideas, all have failed, and it can generate no new ones. If a new one were to happen along, liberal political strategists would have to weigh the consequences of adopting it -- contradicting standing liberal dogma; alienating a special interest; admitting to error -- against the consequences of not adopting it -- trundling along on the same tired slogans and failed policies. Therein lies the danger of assuming a pose of moral and intellectual superiority while selling one's movement to a coalition of interest groups.

     But the Right is treading substantially the same ground. The "Republican Revolution" of 1994, so bravely begun, proved to be a wet firecracker. That wasn't because the ideas it had promulgated were bad ones, nor that its representatives were arrogant asses, but because once in power, Republican legislators overwhelmingly placed press approbation and "collegiality" above achieving what the voters had sent them to Washington to achieve. They allowed their victorious theses to be muddied by their conduct in office -- talking low taxes, free markets, and the rule of law while perpetuating the existing regime out of fear of criticism from their opponents and bad notices in the New York Times.

     The Left can no longer write books; the Right has burned the ones it penned.

     The Left seems a bit frenzied these days, frenzy being the behavioral evidence of having no new ideas, yet staring at the same old problems. But the Right is tinged with despair, having betrayed its ideological legacy, and seeing it badly stained by public disdain, for a mess of column-inches. Conservatives and libertarians had the intellectual assets with which to establish a truly enduring majority; they merely failed to act on them.

     The Republican majorities of 1994-2006 are now only a memory, and Republican officeholders have only themselves to blame. Their overt ideology is still vastly superior to that of the Democrats, but their embrace of the privileges of power, and their preference for praise over the public interest, have tarnished it in a fashion that might take decades to cleanse. That's what you get for burning the books you've written. Psychologizing your opponents is no substitute for well thought out ideas and their faithful execution.

Elections, Mathematics, And The Woke

     I’m a long-time admirer of Virginia State Assemblyman Nick Freitas. He exemplifies something the rest of the Republican Party lacks: courage. He speaks plainly and forthrightly, and he hews to his convictions. There aren’t many other Republicans of whom that could be honestly said.

     (Of course, it’s hard to stand up for something if you lack a spine. A great percentage of Republican politicians appear to have had that organ removed. In all candor, when your overriding priorities are to get re-elected and keep the media from denouncing you in boldface, convictions tend to look like a luxury item. But I digress.)

     Freitas recently had an illuminating conversation with political analyst Christian Hines about the recent leak of the Democrats’ unreleased assessment of why they lost the 2024 presidential election, and a lot of down-ticket races besides:

     If you don’t have thirteen minutes to spare for the video – entirely understandable; I’d never criticize you for it – here’s the gist:

The base of the Democrat Party is insane.

     That assessment – charmingly, Hines calls it an autopsy – could not be released because it says that and nothing else:

     …it's not just that they did crazy stuff; they allowed themselves to be more and more defined by the crazy stuff, and they do seem to understand that to a point within the autopsy. The problem is that they've created a situation within the Democratic party where if you actually implement some of the things, not even all of them, just some of the things that this autopsy is suggesting that they should – to for instance reach out to men or reach out to working-class people – it would devastate the modern Democrat base and the modern Democrat coalition.

     I’ve written about coalition politics several times before. The Democrat strategists’ approach to presidential politics is coalition-based: assemble interest groups, promising to advance their interests, until you reach 50% plus one of the voting populace. This has been the Dems’ approach to national elections since the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Yet of the 17 presidential elections since then, they’ve won only 8 and lost 9 – and one victory was over a “caretaker” president, and two of the losses were to a political outsider who lacked the full backing of his party. From that tally, you might think they’d be looking for an improvement on their approach. The leaked autopsy tells that tale fairly clearly.

     But that autopsy was deliberately suppressed. It was suppressed because its authors were aware that if it were published, the party’s base would rise in a fury. The base is composed of a coalition of hard-left “woke” activists from the furthest reaches of the Democrat Party: the segment that dominates issue activism, fundraising, and primary elections. Alienating any significant fraction of the base would be crippling in the near term. The strategists can’t bear the thought.

     But the base is the problem. The base chooses the party’s nominees. Thus, the nominees are satisfactory to the base, but wholly unpalatable to the larger electorate. They’re especially unattractive to unaligned and weakly aligned voters, who may be as much as 40% of the whole. The mathematics of America’s two-stage elections processes is hostile to that approach.

     The Dems are thus caught in a bind of their own making. That they can’t discuss it openly among themselves is a clear giveaway.

     While the problem manifests most clearly at the presidential level, it can have impact locally as well. State demographics are changing rapidly. This is especially visible in California, which by enacting a 5% wealth tax on billionaires – “We’re only going to do it this once! Cross our hearts and hope to die!” – has driven its wealthiest residents to relocate in massive numbers. A great many are hopping over Lake Tahoe to resettle in Nevada, which has no individual income tax, no corporate income tax, and no capital-gains tax. Given Muslim-socialist mayor Zohran Mamdani’s open hostility toward the wealthy, I would expect the best-heeled residents of New York City to follow suit.

     This may sound like unalloyed good news to conservatives and Republican partisans. It isn’t. If the Democrat Party becomes nationally uncompetitive because of its capture by the “woke,” what incentive will remain for Republican politicians to seek to please its conservative allegiants? Remember also that America’s plutocrats, with a few notable exceptions, have trended politically leftward in recent decades. Their relocation to “red” states isn’t guaranteed to be without unpleasant secondary effects.

     This is something to watch and ponder.

Creating Your Own Problems

     Good morning, Gentle Reader. Happy Vernal Equinox (traditional). Wherever you are in this blessed land, I hope you’ll enjoy beautiful spring weather today, because I won’t. Here on the World’s Largest Piece of Terminal Moraine, it’s predicted to be overcast and damp all day. Bummer.

     I’ve come reluctantly to the conclusion that, with the notable exception of the Gentle Readers of Liberty’s Torch, people are pretty BLEEP!ing stupid. They’re nearly always the source of their own miseries. They overspend and then complain about being broke. They cloister themselves and then complain about having no friends or social life. They try to drive North-South on East-West roads, get smacked up, and then complain about “careless drivers” and high insurance premiums.

     The enveloping diagnosis for this malady is “It’s Someone Else’s Fault” syndrome. Given its prevalence, I have no doubt that you’ve observed it in someone you know. There’ve been days when I’ve imagined it everywhere.

     That may be because it really is everywhere.

* * *

     A brief vignette: Many years ago I had a coworker whom I shall henceforward refer to as “old Ray,” because that’s how he was known around the office. “Old Ray” couldn’t be bothered about things the rest of us regarded as the basic requirements of courtesy, such as tossing trash in a trash can rather than on the floor. He was a well-respected senior engineer, but so heedless of his surroundings that he created chaos for the rest of us.

     In particular, “old Ray” regularly failed to check whether the coffeemaker had ended its cycle before grabbing the carafe and filling his mug. He created many messes in this fashion. I, being a snotty little shit, upbraided him for it one day when his proclivity had left a large puddle of coffee on the floor of our office. He took umbrage, and a shouting match ensued. Management intervened before blows could be struck.

     I was taken aside and admonished for the incident. I’d “created the problem,” you see. “Everyone” knew that we had to make allowances for “old Ray.” I asked whether management was aware of the effect on the rest of us, and was answered with a “what can you do” shrug. I went back to my own labors shaking my head.

     It got me a reputation as a boat rocker. “Be careful around Fran,” the office gospel ran, “He says things.” Never mind that I was also the one who “does things,” such as solving others’ intractable problems and cleaning up after “old Ray;” that was deemed immaterial.

     I realized then that the rest of us were fated to clean up after “old Ray” until his retirement date should arrive. Management policy had deemed the status quo preferable to an uproar. Given that consensus, I, who’d evoked an uproar, was “the problem.” We’d been doomed to trash tossed aside in hallways and regular puddles on the floor.

     No, I didn’t stay there very long.

* * *

     Why am I exercised about this particular subject, you ask? Because few have grasped a simple fact of life in society:

Politics is not the source of solutions,
But of burdens, dissatisfactions, and disharmony.

     A private problem can be mitigated or solved by private means. A politicized problem becomes everyone’s problem. It draws the State into the matter and compels everyone to “take a side.” Such an expansion of the scope of the problem creates several things:

• Resentment among the unwillingly involved;
• Hard feelings between those who disagree about the matter;
• An opportunity for the State to expand its powers, which it will surely exploit.

     As if further irony were required, it also lessens the feeling of responsibility among those who did the politicizing. Now that it’s “everyone’s problem,” they can sit back while “everybody” – meaning the State, of course – does whatever will be done about it, good, bad, or indifferent.

     It’s madness, but it’s everywhere. “The personal is political!” shout the rabble-rousers of the Left. That means the end of privacy – the end of private action in response to private problems. It means that we must wait upon the State for the remediation of what displeases us. Finally, it means those who disapprove of you, whatever the reason, can bludgeon you into complying with their preferences. Assuming they can assemble a local preponderance of force, that is.

     I’m not going to thrash this into the magma layer. I just needed a moment to vent about… well, about “things as they are,” including ordinary people’s lack of resistance to the politicization of what should be private matters handled privately. We keep getting sucked into it, when a moment’s consideration should make it plain that politicizing an “issue” nearly always makes it worse.

     For the love of God, stop politicizing petty shit! Stop trying to compel others to conform to your preferences! Accept human variation as long as it does you no harm. If you find it intolerable, either wall it off, or move away from it and build a wall around yourself.

     See also this old tirade. And do have a nice day.

The Dynamics Of Disgust

     [I’m a bit snowed under just now, so have a reprint of a piece from the old Palace of Reason. It appeared there on June 7, 2002 – FWP]

* * *

     How is it that this continuing circus of incompetence and corruption that we call Washington, DC hasn't turned the great majority of the American people off to politics completely?

     The ethical standard for political behavior has sunk to depths unimaginable by private persons even half a century ago. Go back a full century, and you wouldn't even find politicians able to imagine 2000's levels of depravity. I know a lot has changed, but have people really become so inured to evil that they can endorse, or at least tolerate, the behavior of our political class?

     There are a lot of stock answers, and many of them have some grain of truth in them. My favorite is the displacement of absolute right and wrong by the notion of situational ethics. But all the stock answers are vulnerable to the following challenge: We know this kind of behavior to be a detriment, not a support, to both personal survival and social stability. How is it, then, that its practitioners flourish, and our society stands?

     I have a good friend who works for the local headquarters of Head Start. He hates it and everything connected to it. He brings me stories of corruption and intrigue that would turn the stomach of a goat. Yet he's worked there for more than twenty years. It's his livelihood. He doesn't know how to do anything else.

     We might be witnesses to the emergence of a new (for America) kind of stability: the stability of the shepherds and the sheep.

     Once the sheep have gotten used to being herded and shorn in return for their daily groats, they forget what it was like to be free. They lose the use of their "freedom muscles:" the ability to reason, the willingness to accept personal responsibility for their well-being, and the courage to assume risk. This is all very well for the shepherds, of course.

     Our "daily groats" are the largesse that Washington and the states distribute to us in a myriad guises. In 1980, some 34 million people drew their whole incomes from government; the figure must be higher today. A great many more receive some sort of payment, tax break, or commercial benefit from government. It's likely that the number of us who are the "beneficiaries" of some government program or policy exceeds half the population of the country.

     People will seldom rise in rebellion against, or draw back in disgust from, that which they believe puts bread on their tables. One cannot even contemplate such a thing without suffering severe cramps in the wallet. And should the possibility of detail changes arise, everyone will strive most mightily to protect his own ox from being gored; that's the Public Choice effect in its most venomous form.

     If I'm correct about this dynamic, we've entered an era of impotent disgust: a disgust which contents itself with itself, rather than seeking to alter the conditions that produced it. It suggests that the modern American Leviathan could last a long time, despite all our earnest wishes to the contrary.

“Self-Government”

     Just recently, I stumbled upon this:

     If those percentages still hold, then once again we’re in the mystifying position where an overwhelming portion of the country is demanding a policy change that Congress is resisting with every trick at its disposal. Senate Majority Leader John Thune says one thing but does another. Several GOP Senators have pledged to oppose the SAVE Act anyway, so even were the filibuster barrier to be overcome, it probably wouldn’t garner a majority of the votes.

     Of course, it’s not the first time. A strong majority wanted Obamacare repealed; remember what happened to that? A strong majority wants federal taxation and spending slashed, the troops brought home from wherever, and Jeffrey Epstein’s porno-pedo clients hanged. Given those precedents plus what we know about the dynamic of power, the probability is that the SAVE Act – i.e., the act that would require voters to present proof of citizenship at the polls – will die aborning.

     Yes, that will allow the Democrats to steal future elections with fraudulent and otherwise illegal votes. Likely it will also cost the Republican Party both Houses of Congress in November. But so what? This is “the system.” You know, that nebulous but supremely important thing Pam Bondi has told us will collapse if Epstein’s associates are indicted and tried. Apparently that’s what Pam Bondi has sworn to protect.

     It’s out in the open, now. “The system” will defend itself and its allegiants a outrance against the nation itself. There’s no pretense of anything else any longer. “Self-government” has been revealed as a joke, an empty notion that regime propagandists have foisted upon us to pacify us. We are ruled by men whose aims run counter to our well-being, and they don’t care who knows it.

     Don’t mind me, Gentle Reader. I’m having “one of those days.” I’m sure that I’ll soon be numb enough to get back into step with the thing. I’ll get back to writing these screeds as if the details matter. It’s just that for the moment, I can’t believe any of it.

     Have a nice day.

The Pressure

     The technophiles and space-travel enthusiasts are moderately agog that Elon Musk has shifted his focus from colonizing Mars to colonizing the Moon. For my part, I’m pleased. It was always the more sensible first step, if less glamorous. It’s also a necessary one: the Moon is the low-gravity resource base from which to continue on to the rest of the Solar System.

     But questions have arisen, with this one front and center: Why would anyone want to live on Mars / the Moon? A lot of people appear to be entertaining it, which suggests that there’s been a fall-off in Americans’ imagination and drive.

     I can think of two reasons to remove my elderly carcass from this ball of mud:

• The sheer adventure of the thing;
• To live in freedom.

     While I’m no longer of an age or fitness to go adventuring in the classical sense, neither were a lot of the European migrants who populated North America. They went anyway, often entire clans at a stroke. Some of them believed that the choice was between migration and extinction. In the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, for some of them that was demonstrably the case.

     But is that the case for anyone today? Are there subpopulations for whom the hardship of Lunar living would be preferable to remaining in the grip of an implacable fist that’s threatening to squeeze them to death? Perhaps we should ask the dwindling Christian populations of the Islam-dominated hellholes of the Middle East.

     We of the Western nations have begun to sense similar threats. Hostility to freedom is the central forward pressure of the Left. The elimination of all resistance is its aim. And it will never relax or relent.

     Eight years ago, I wrote:

     For a while I was cheered by the rapid development of privately owned and operated orbital transport. It seemed that free enterprise had at last accepted the challenge of taking Man to the ultimate frontier from which the U.S. government had retreated. And indeed, companies such as SpaceX and Blue Origin have made considerable strides toward more economical (albeit still too expensive for a holiday weekend) access to Earth orbit. Perhaps, in another decade or two, we’d see construction begin on space habitats, and perhaps on some persistent human-occupied installations on the Moon.
     Maybe...but more likely not. The principal customers for orbital access are national governments. It would be in those governments’ interest to squash any private effort to colonize space or any of the other bodies in the Solar System. They could do so rather easily, either by terminating all contracts with the company that tries it or by invoking “national security” laws to forbid the effort altogether. Of those two paths, the latter is the more likely. Any government with a “national security” statute could claim that its “security” depends on not being bombed from orbit – and never mind that the owners of a privately-operated space station would have neither a reason nor an incentive to do so.

     The political dynamic continues to operate in its time-honored fashion. Power still attracts the worst members of our species. Governments are still inherently totalitarian: “Oh no, there’s no law against it. You just have to get our permission. It’s just that there’s a little red tape to get through. Please be patient.” They don’t like competition, and they don’t like for anyone to get beyond their reach:

     On the morning of the fourth day, also, a delegation of high-ranking government officials, including a three-star general from the Pentagon and a gentleman from the President’s office, called on [Spacecraft CEO Theodor] Deane.
     The gentleman from the President s office was brief and to the point. Deane was forbidden to undertake any venture whatsoever in space without the permission and control of the Federal Government. To do so would be a violation of national security equivalent to treason. Injunctions would be issued at once if Deane so much as lifted a finger to put an unauthorized satellite into orbit.
     “Do I understand,” Deane demanded, “that a law has just been passed to that specific effect?”
     “Don’t talk foolish, boy,” the general said. “We can make the existing security laws fit you like a straitjacket. Try us and see!”

     [J. W. Schutz, “The Bubble”]

     SpaceX is now racing the clock. Colonizing the Moon is far more feasible in the near term than colonizing Mars. You can bet the rent money that the cleverer folks in Washington know that too. Unless SpaceX establishes a proprietary Lunar colony before the power-mongers in D.C. can get their forces mobilized, the federal government will make such a thing impossible.

     The same pressure that propelled the Puritans to board wind-powered wooden vessels to reach the New World is at work today. The possibility of colonizing other worlds is the last remaining hope for human freedom. Many of us, young and old, would risk all that we have for the chance to be free. The States of Earth will not be pleased should the Moon become a place where we can go to escape them.

The Epstein Files

     I haven’t read them. I don’t intend to. I don’t need more misery or darkness, thanks. But the following caught and held my attention:

People are now openly stating:

"If even a small fraction of what the Epstein files imply is true...

...the good guys lost WWII 💀"

We urgently need full disclosure and many arrests to nip such speculations in the bud.

The entire liberal world order depends on it.

Godspeed!

— Erik Dale 🇳🇴 (@EuroDale) February 4, 2026

     Whoever this gentleman is, I’m certain his heart is in the right place. But is he quite sure what “the entire world liberal order” is? One should know what one has set out to defend.

     The world, partitioned as it is into States that don’t recognize the concept of freedom, does not qualify as “liberal” in the dictionary sense. Not one of the nearly 200 States that exist today respects the rights of the individual. Rather, they assert supremacy – sovereignty, if you prefer – over all persons and things. You must ask their permission for damned near everything.

     Can there be a “liberal world order” when the States that dominate the world are unanimously illiberal?

     But let’s pass on to the Epstein files. From what I’ve read – all of it secondhand, of course – those files implicate many powerful, wealthy, and famous individuals in the most horrific crimes Mankind has ever known. The Iceberg Premise – i.e., that what we can see is only a tiny fraction of what there is – suggests that virtually the entire “upper crust” of American society is vile beyond imagining. That includes the national political class: everyone who wields power at the national level, or who has significant influence over the power wielders’ decisions.

     The word corruption pales beside the monstrousness of what the files have revealed. Yet though Lord Acton is probably spinning in his grave, I must admit that none of it surprises me.

     Visualize me shrugging as I write: So what now?

* * *

     Except for the ministry of Christ, the United States of America was the grandest effort in all of history. A dear friend has called America “the crowning glory of human civilization.” He’s right. Even in our decayed and tottering state, we outshine anything else any nation can offer. That’s why the rest of the world seeks to batten on us; what excellence and virtue remain belong to America and Americans.

     Yet we teeter at the edge of the abyss. We’ve gone badly wrong, and we know it. Some of us can even tell you why: We put our trust in princes.

     Outside the narrow bounds of the family, for any man to claim and wield power over another is evil. There are no escapes; it’s an arrogance that merits scourging or worse. So why do we tolerate it when it calls itself government?

     The lust for power is a lust that cannot be sated. It always demands more. And it demands proof as well. The proof is provided by power’s victims:

     ‘How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?’
     Winston thought. ‘By making him suffer,’ he said.
     ‘Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.’

     How many times have I cited that passage? Its insight into power-lust is unequaled. Yet even those who praise George Orwell’s masterwork to the heavens shy back from its full implications. The great majority of Mankind insists, vocally or silently, that the State is “a necessary evil.”

     What other evils would you deem “necessary,” Gentle Reader?

* * *

     “Utopia is not one of the options.” – David Bergland

     For as long as there are men, there will be evil men. Human free will and our susceptibility to temptation guarantee it. But the great majority of us are, if sinners, at least aware of the dividing line between what we can get away with and what will get us invited to a necktie party as guest of honor.

     It’s when evil men have access to power over others that the worst problems arise and proliferate. For over time, the dynamic of power operates to bring evil men to power. They have a natural advantage over good men in pursuing it: they want it more.

     It doesn’t matter what form the State is given: autocratic, oligarchical, republican, democratic, what have you. The State is where the power is, and therefore where those who most want power will go. Could it be any clearer?

     But we were talking about the Epstein files, weren’t we?

     What those files reveal are the foulest deeds of the evilest men of our time. Should it come as a surprise that those evildoers were power-wielders, elite members of the Establishment? It seems perfectly in keeping with their villainy. Yet millions of people are in shock: How could they? Look at all they have, all they were given!

     Shock can be useful. It can shake the scales from our eyes. I submit that it’s time and long past time. Don’t let this moment pass unrecognized for what it really tells us.